Valencia’s Roberto Soldado believes that Real Madrid’s ‘week long’ complaints saw to it that the referee last night was reluctant to whistle against them.

Los Che fell to a 2-0 defeat amid protests against a number of calls from officials. Ricardo Carvalho appeared to handle the ball inadvertently in the Valencia penalty box, whilst Soldado was called offside on three occasions when through on goal, with replays suggesting they were tight decisions.

“The truth is that I am happy with the way we played because we created chances and we played very well, but we lacked precision to have a good result too, and there have been things that we could not control,” reflected the striker at the end of the game.

“What things? Well, that Real Madrid have put a lot of pressure all week on referees and he has not been able to raise himself for the game out of fear of harming the bigger team.

“He has not been up to the game at any time. There are games in which the officials will benefit you and others that will harm you, but in the field, with how difficult it can be, I still saw that it was not offside for any of the three that went against me.

“There was also the penalty where Carvalho handled it…

“This is déjà vu, I’ve experienced this before. But hey, we have to think about reversing the tie. We feel very helpless, it is outrageous because we have seen that the officials were afraid to hurt the bigger team and that cannot be.

“Eventually our protests are useless because in the end they will punish you.”

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